


On Importance

by FictionPenned



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alex asked why we even have this lever, Drunk Texting, Drunken Confessions, Other, ThoscheiLockdown2020, ThoscheiTreatLockdown2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:01:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23269603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned
Summary: The Doctor: Are you drunk?O: It’s none of your business if I am.O: Maybe.O: Had a case of ginger beer.O: Nonalcoholic. Very ginger-y.O: Might’ve been two cases.O: Lost count.Response to the prompt "PROMPT: Dhawan!Master gets drunk and spills all his worries onto Thirteen" for the Thoschei Lockdown exchange.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 122
Collections: Thoschei Lockdown The First 2020





	On Importance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [space_boye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/space_boye/gifts).



The worst thing about humans is the fact that they require hours of sleep to keep their bodies functioning. Time Lords, like the Doctor, need only about an hour or so a night to keep their minds and bodies up to snuff, and that disparity leaves her with a frustratingly large pile of alone time on her hands. There were times in her life when the Doctor valued those moments, used them to connect with the TARDIS and take the occasional hop back to nostalgic spots and check in on the people that she has left behind, but given the shattered state of her hearts and scattered mess of her mind, being alone has started to feel dangerous.    
  
She’s taken to sweeping the universe for the Master, repeatedly performing routine check functions as unanswered questions and quiet grief threaten to burn her from the inside out. It’s not healthy, but she doesn’t know what else to do when the fam isn’t there to provide a distraction. 

One night, she relegates herself to pacing the control room over and over again, counting forty steps to one wall and forty-one steps back. It is a pattern that doesn’t make sense, but every back and forth trip confirms its truth, and as a puzzle, it succeeds in being distracting enough to prevent her mind from being dragged back into its sorrow.

Somewhere in the depths of a pocket, a mobile phone vibrates. 

It takes her a moment of frantic digging to find it amongst the mess of items that she carries. There are only a few people in the universe with her number -- all of them important -- so it is absolutely imperative that she read and reply immediately.    
  
A familiar name pops up on the screen. It was once met with fondness, but has been recently colored with resentment and disdain. She should have changed his entry in her phone as soon as she found out who he really was, but she was sentimental enough to cling onto the reminder of happier days spent swapping tall tales and decoding pictures of fish. 

  
  
**1 SMS: O**

  
  
Her finger hovers over the notification, deciding whether or not it is worth reading.    
  
Eventually, she surrenders beneath the weight of her curiosity. 

  
  
**O: Given my luck, I bet you changed your number.** **  
** **O: Or maybe you forgot. You’ve always been a bit flighty, Doctor.** **  
** **O: Or maybe you were sentimental enough to think I’d text you again.** **  
** **O: If so, congratulations, you WIN!** **  
** **O: The prize is a dead planet. Enjoy your stay!**

In a flash of rage, she throws the phone across the room. It bounces off of a column and onto the floor. Once the frantic beating of her hearts calms down and the haze retreats from her vision, she crosses the room and picks it up again, hoping that it survived the force of her anger. It did. 

  
**The Doctor: What do you want?**

  
He replies almost instantaneously.    


  
**O: What do I want? I want what I always want.** **  
** **O: I want your attention.** **  
** **O: I want you to look at me like we’re equals.** **  
** **O: I want you to stop pitying me.** **  
** **O: And most of all, I want you to remember that deep down, beneath all that moral posturing and all that power, you once believed that you and I were the same.**

Her wrath reduces to a quiet simmer, and the lights of the TARDIS interior dim to match it. Outside and in, her entire world glows a red orange that speaks of Gallifrey’s ruin. 

**  
** **  
** **The Doctor: Are you drunk?** **  
** **  
** **O: It’s none of your business if I am.** **  
** **O: Maybe.** **  
** **O: Had a case of ginger beer.** **  
** **O: Nonalcoholic. Very ginger-y.** **  
** **O: Might’ve been two cases.** **  
** **O: Lost count.**

**  
** **  
** _ … O is typing …  
  
_ She waits for him to finish, fingers hovering over the tiny, glowing keyboard as she decides whether or not it’s worth replying at all. She has tried to save the Master from himself already, has waved a dozen flags of surrender and extended a hundred invitations. He never accepts, and she has grown tired. Tired of fighting losing battles, tired of clinging to someone in the hopes that they might one day love her enough to change, tired of staring across the divide at an old friend who has been reduced to a shadow of their former promise. 

  
  
**O: Everything I do, I do for you, you know.** **  
** **O: All of it.** **  
** **O: Tearing up empires for your attention, destroying the people who destroyed you, it doesn’t happen by accident.** **  
** **O: Are you listening, Doctor?** **  
** **  
** **The Doctor: I don’t want that. I never wanted that.** **  
** **  
** **O: You destroyed Gallifrey before I did. Or did you forget?** **  
** **O: Slip your mind, that little fact?  
** **O: How convenient for you.**

**  
** **  
** She is terribly tempted to hurl the phone again, but reason stays her hand. 

  
  
**O: You wouldn’t even look at me if I stayed quiet.** **  
** **O: I’d just be another puppy, following you around.** **  
** **O: You wouldn’t offer me a second glance.  
** **O: Could never stand the thought of being disposable.** **  
** **  
** **The Doctor: People aren’t disposable.** **  
** **  
** **O: Of course they are.  
** **O: We’re all just ants to you.**

**  
** **  
** The Doctor’s hands shake as she types her response. 

  
  
**The Doctor: Never. Never Ever.** **  
** **The Doctor: Humans are not disposable, and you are not disposable.** **  
** **The Doctor: You were my first friend. My oldest friend. My best friend. That doesn’t just disappear because you chose to walk a different path than mine. It doesn’t make our time together any less important.**

It’s true. As much as she despised her time at the Academy, as much as she failed to meet the standards that were being set for her, as many nights as she cried herself to sleep, the moments with him kept her afloat. She gazed at him with love and admiration back then. He was the smartest person she ever knew. Smarter than all their teachers, smarter than the councils, smarter even than Rassilon. 

**O: There were others before me.** **  
** **  
** **The Doctor: They don’t count if I can’t remember them.**

**O: You loved me when we were young.** **  
** **O: When did that stop?** **  
** **O: Was it ever even real?** **  
** **  
**

Her hearts leap into her throat.    
  
****

**The Doctor: Of course it was. It was real then. It is real now. Probably will be real tomorrow.**

It is a long time before he replies. So long, in fact, that the Doctor is convinced that he must have forgotten her. It is easy to get washed away in the tide of intoxication. She is about to slide the phone back into her pocket when it finally buzzes again.    
  
****

**1 MMS: O**

A picture of the Pantheon fills her screen. Excitement flutters in her stomach as she races towards the console, running wires and hitting buttons and flipping switches until the hidden picture beneath swims to the surface. She stares at it for a long minute, hearts racing so fast that the individual four by four beats blur into a meaningless, fluttering buzz, as quick as dragonfly wings.    
  
_...The Doctor is typing… _

**The Doctor: Tomorrow.** **  
** **  
** **O: Is that a promise, Doctor?** ****  
**  
** **The Doctor: Yes.**


End file.
